Monday, November 28, 2011

... and we're all out of Shake'n'Vac

It's down to the wire. It's pretty much the last working week until the TFCWM kicks off. Since I have been working from home I've had to grapple with some severe IT difficulties; a dying desk-top PC, lag, drop-outs, and reduced functionality when using remote log-in.

It's been a trying time.

I tried to send a last email to work of a draft report. It was so big (17 meg) it shat my Outlook. That in turn shat the desk top. I keep getting a can't boot error as it won't automatically find the right drive. I have to F11 on the boot-up, select the active hard disk, then get into Outlook to cancel the send in the vain hope that's what caused it all and the damage isn't permanent.

Then there's the finance crap. I am not a finance officer. I have never pretended to be. But thanks in part to a series of owning areas never giving me support to do the finance side I ended up doing it. So now I am getting assistance but the assisting person doesn't seem to like me and has their own idea of what is required and when that assistance will be provided. All this in the last week where it absolutely has to get done and finished with. Further more they asked me to do some complicated piece of financial administration that involved pleading with contractors for assistance and then after I spent two days setting it up ... they decided it was too complicated and they'll just go with their original plan. With absolutely no thanks for the effort I went to and all the work I lost as a result.

Then there was the confusion over my leave applications. They got stuck in the system. As such I am going into this operation and recovery without knowing if I end up having to owe my time off as I am using additional leave provisions that my org may or may not grant me (since I don't have normal sick leave being that I am constantly sick).

So I lost my rag a few times today. Tears, shouting, the works. All while my guts were riven with acute abdominal pain and the pain of my dead hip burst up through my body and radiated out from my fucking head. At one point I screamed C___ so loudly and for so long that my throat gave out.

The desk top computer just shat itself again. I was literally two seconds from getting into Outlook to kill that file that fucked up everything beyond recognition when the computer blue-screened. The anger and frustration and sheer screaming despair is washing all over me like you would not believe.

I booked the operation for the end of the calendar year so as to minimise disruption to my work and to various reports that needed to go out at key times. As such I wore my hip out to the last bare strands of connecting musculature and have experienced fairly constant pain. But I kept going. Every obstacle I hit, fucked-up IT crap, fucked-up finance crap, fucked-up personal administration crap, fucked-up no-assistance crap (1); I kept the fuck going.

Now it's the last week and I am tired. So tired. I just want it all to end. To all go away. To tap out and let someone else do it. But there is no one else to do it. I am it. I am the only one that can see this through because I can't trust people to do it for me.

UPDATE: Just been told the pain killer I rely on because it doesn't exacerbate my slow motility is being pulled from the market.

UPDATE2: It shat itself for the fourth time. Each time I open Outlook and get to deleting it the same blue screen of death appears and the same fucking 'can't boot' message appears. I am so fucking angry and upset and fucked off at the world that I really want to boot some divine figure in the nads. Any volunteers?

(1) In my workplace's defence we had had a perfect storm of new building, internal staff re-org (both macro and micro), new building undergoing a refit, and a substantial dumping of work upon us. So it wasn't disinterest or callousness that meant a lack of help. Just the sheer volume of crap that meant they couldn't help me. Luckily, however, new boss (now 18 months) massively improved my skill set in report crunching and as such at least, at the now end of all this, it meant I could be trusted to get on with it and present a report that needed only minor corrections. So really ... in many ways ... my sheer level of competence has left me undone (1a). I know we have great conditions of service, and we earn decent pay. And I know the public service is festooned with much dead wood because once you get a berth and if you do the minimum required then you will be gainfully employed for life. But fuck me some of us do earn our money and we do more and more each year with less and less people. The government has embraced the e-revolution. We work better and we work smarter. And we do a lot more with less because IT systems allow us to do so. Even if sometimes they fuck up and cause me a pall of utter misery and red-faced anger.(1a) I know it seems unusual for a man of such shitty self-esteem to actually blow a trumpet about performance but objectively I am an excellent worker. I not only get almost all my tasks completed I do so under trying circumstances of poor health. Furthermore I am able to help out others, especially when they get short notice uber work dumped on them. I am more skilled at using computers than most public servants and, as such, I get called on to provide assistance with graphics or with higher-level Word functionality. In truth I enjoy helping people. It makes me feel better about myself. Besides ... it also in turn allows me to call in favours when needed. And holy Christ have I had to do that in the past few weeks.

6 comments:

I still find that a loud and incredibly long swear word (that C-word especially), is a great way to relieve tension..

I'm sorry to hear about all the stress and dramas associated with you trying to doing the right thing at work.

I've left a suitably bad (as in funny ha ha) on your spoof of the wiki asking for donations thing. I hope you can at least crack a smile.. off to post the link now..

(I realise as an anonymous, it seems strange that I respond to your posts. But I really appreciate the way that you blog about your experience of being in the world. And I love the way your blog is a mix of nerdy related humour [I love me the D&D], family humour, work humour, and when the world decides to sh*t on you.)

You are indeed divine! You are easily in my top five favourite people.

And Anon, thanks for making my night. Blog writers are greedy whores for feedback and acknowledgment. So it's always great to have someone take time and effort to say something nice about you. I thank you!

besides, your blog has given me plenty of reasons to laugh out loud and share my laughter with the rest of the 9-5 (plus a crap lot of unpaid overtime) ants on the bus with me. That way they've got something to share with their not-comrades in arms about the nutter on the bus who laughs at random times..

FYI - I'm not the same Anon that did the emoticon penis.. but I'm the Anon that had the kids rhyming about human gametes, whilst "hanging out with them" so their parents could have a child-free a night out.